March 25

Join Spiral HQ and the Strangers as they celebrate Spiral Knights' birthday! We have several things going on, so let's get to it!

Today through April 7, 2015: Spiral HQ has assembled prize boxes from the past year together into a Surprise Box. When you open a Surprise Box, you will randomly receive a past prize box and confetti. There is also a chance to find a Stately Cap costume helm! For details on this box and its contents, visit the wiki here.

April 1-7, 2015: Help Biscotti, the Skylark's Head Chef, avoid disaster in two special missions - Total Caketastrophe and A Gremlin in Knead. Fight Creep Cakes and Batterbots to earn Cake Slice tokens, then visit Maskwell in Haven Town Square to exchange your tokens for:

- Cake helms
- Anniversary Prize Boxes
- other party accessories

New this year in the Anniversary Prize Boxes: the Prismatic Grand Topper, the Prismatic Field Cap, and the Prismatic Plumed Cap.

NOTE: Although this event does start on April 1, it's not a trick. Pinky swear. That's why we're announcing it now and not on that day!

April 3-5, 2015: The Birdsong Trading Company is holding a three-day giveaway for the Spiral Knights Anniversary celebration! HOW DO YOU GET STUFF?! Just be logged into the game for your chance to win party hats, confetti and other fun prizes.

Steam Trading

This game participates in Steam Trading

Items from this game are tradable and can be viewed in your inventory on your Steam Community Profile.

About This Game

Band together and fight to the Core!
Spiral Knights is a cooperative adventure in a persistent world with a focus on instant, fast-paced action. Arm yourself and join the ranks of the Spiral Knights; stranded on an alien world, they must explore the ever-changing Clockworks beneath its surface in hopes of reaching its mysterious Core.

Key Features

Co-operative Exploration

The Clockworks offer challenges that are best tackled with friends.

Fight monsters, solve puzzles and discover treasures together!

Instant Action

Go from login to a multiplayer adventure in less than a minute.

Ever-changing World

The Clockworks cycle levels to explore in real time. Every moment of every day changes the world.

Create an Arsenal

There are hundreds of unique weapons and gear to discover and alchemize.

Spiral Knights is free to play, no subscription is required to enjoy everything the game has to offer.

Special Offer:

Team Fortress 2 "The Spiral Sallet" Hat Receive a free Spiral Knights-themed Team Fortress 2 hat by unlocking an achievement in Spiral Knights!
To receive the free TF2 hat, players must reach the first Clockwork Terminal from any gate in the Haven Arcade and unlock the 'Mission Accomplished' achievement. (Players who've already unlocked it will also receive the hat.)

This little onlinegame was once a really good one. It had a really nice developer team with friendly gamemasters, a community which was always fun to have a chat with. Regular content updates with bug fixes, where the developers often listened to feedback. New game modes, new levels... but: these times are all over, and I must WARN you about this game.

It started with the acquisition by Sega at the end of 2011. The guys at Three Rings said, there won't be any changes because of this. It was the first lie, because of Sega, there were suddenly EU servers. Although this was positive, everything went VERY slowly downhill since this. I'm not going to cover much gameplay elements, because these are available in other reviews.

A few weeks later in November 2011, they have released a content update with recycled boss levels, which are very same, but only harder. What's the catch? Per level, you needed a "shadow key", and it was findable as a 1% drop in lockboxes, something where you had to spend 2$/€/whatever to open one (if you wanted to of course). For a 1% chance. The community responded by a massive protest, saying that everyone should boycott this. Especially because the developers never did such a rip-off before. One week later, the shadow keys were available for "a limited time", for an energy price of 1800, something around more than 6$. The following weeks they were permanently added for purchase. This was not to be the first money try controlled by Sega.

The next "big" thing was in 2012 a new boss level added as a DLC, for purchase with a 7$ fee. Once again many community members were upset about this, since they had released in 2011 three whole boss and many other levels for free. Although you may say, "but they need to earn money too!", you may be right, but this was abused by an increasing money greed by Sega, slowly completely ruining the future and meaning of the game. I will shorten the next events in 2012: After several other cash grab attempts, the most hilarious attempt happened at the end of 2012. It was the guild hall update, and seriously EVERYTHING was overexpensive. Only people with 24 hour free time, farming the same repetitive levels 100 times per day, or 3 - 4 digit number wallets had the pleasure to burn their cash, or better said, to customize your own guild hall.

Meanwhile, Sega had found out that people don't like DLCs. They like costumes! Which means, the development for all other stuff like from their view pointless things like content updates are completely throttled, and costumes were released and updated regulary, sometimes several times in a month. Usually one costume box was available for "free" if you purchased energy for more than 20$. Later these boxes were available for energy as well, but on the same real-money level.

In December 2012, Three Rings had announced the Battle Sprites, little pets which are a nice help in a battle, but not really necessary. The community was hyped. 7 months later, in July 2013, they had finally released the Battle Sprites. What happened in the meantime? Nothing at all, only tons of cash promos with even more costumes. Please note, most costumes aren't something new. They were simple reskins, a cheap color change. Even a 12 year old could achieve this in programs like Paint.net or Gimp with a few clicks. More about these Battle Sprites: If you get your first one for free, the Sprite is level 1, and completely useless. You can level it up until level 100, but this will take a develish amount of time, if you aren't planing to level it up the rest of your life. Here grins the cash grab again: There were plently of purchaseable items to speed up the progress. Veteran players which had a lot of minerals and materials by previous level missions had the best chances to avoid the cash grab as good as possible on their way to level the poor Sprite up to level 100. And there are the next things to facepalm about:

The Battle Sprites are completely unbalanced. The Dragon, which was meant to be an offensive Sprite, is ridiculously weak. The half-offensive-defensive Ghost Sprite has more offensive powers and damage.

Even the defensive Cat Sprite is better than the Dragon, because the skill "Heart Attack" makes it much easier for you to spam your own attacks, if there are heart pickups everywhere. Major balance problems like this aren't fixed; it's still the same today! And there are no signs that they care about this, or the developers are not allowed to care about it. Gameplay bugs, glitches or balance problems have a pathetic high chance to be completely ignored at all, which wasn't the case in 2011. Today they will only issue an emergency patch when one of their cash "promos" stuff has a little texture bug, glitch, or whatever. It became very obvious that it's all about new cash stuff and costumes now, and many veteran members have left the game because of this situation. This online game has too little content to live without content updates, these were an important reason for many people to stay. And since these people have left the game, there are now only these left which think the current situation is perfectly okay and everything is great. Which is another problem:

While you had in 2011 a lot of people free for an adventure or a chat, this is today only partially the case anymore. Many people have developed their own closed-circle-connections in their guilds, like to talk or blaspheme about other people, because of boredom or whatever reasons (I can confirm this with the German community, English could be different). Since there are no new content updates anymore, except one or two simple short missions in ONE year, some people stay there for Social Engineering. The game supports Steam trading, where you could trade energy for games, items from other online games items or more. Which is very attractive for some people. But I have kept the best to the last:

In early months of 2014, someone has hacked the game, and has duplicated items in auctionhouse or had gifted them to other people (as far as I could see it on the forums before it got censored away). They have banned almost everyone who has purchased or accepted such duplicated items in the auctionhouse or via trade, and how are we and other people supposed to see if a virtual item is actually "real" or not (since when are virtual items real anyway?). A friend of mine got such items via a trade, and he gave me some to me and a few guildmates too, because free things are always good, isn't it? From their view obviously not. Many others, including me, got banned in a massive ban wave, with hundreds of other people, and they absolutely don't care about it, nor my massive amount of playtime or invested money. I had contacted their support, which said, "We require a healthy mind from every player", refusing to take off the ban, and indirectly saying I'm a liar. But they´re the liars they already knew about that bug for weeks and didn´t fix it.

Their gamemaster staff became like "brainwashed", handling situations for their profit. In 2011 they have never thought about crazy things like a massive ban wave, just because one bad guy set a fire in the game (metaphorical). It was a time where they have cared about their people very intensively, if people were actually happy about the game progress. And it's all over. No active content development, no mature and friendly community anymore, no new things, no hope at all. This game is for every interested gamer a hopeless case now if you want to play it for a long time. Because Sega treats Spiral Knights like a cashcow, milking it's milk til it's blood and bones. No wonder why one of their lead designers called Nick left Three Rings this year. It was once a very promising and great game, until Sega came in. I could extend this long text even more, but I will stop now.

As much as I love this game, and continue to play it, I do not reccomend that others play it. The game is nice sure, but it takes too long to progress, and many people (some of my friends included) are turned off this game because of the dismal rewards for completing anything in Spiral Knights. There has been no communication to players about any upcoming updates from the developers (last major update was twelve months ago) and it seems any updates now are just for cosmetic pay boxes, not gauranteed to give you anything worth your money, not to mention the gamebreaker gun recently added in a 'prize' box.

In short, this game would be better if they removed a few features, tweaked the Player Vs Player, released new content more frequently and made it easier for new comers to get geared up.

it's still worth playing, but poor decisions, lack of updates and further balancing (they balanced a few things but after the lead designer quit everything went down hill fast including an allready announced BIG update and balancing) will make it so that the game will get to grindy for your taste and/or boring REAL fast (grinding the same maps for more money) it's free so DO give it a shot and like me, keep hope the devs will redeem themselves and go back to the old ways and make this a realy great MMO

The lead designer left OOO and after that the game went from good to recycled and VERY grindy.There was a big update announced while the LD was still at OOO but now still no news and the only "updates" the game gets is recycled/recolord costume pieces or just reskinned (end-game) weapons.

the game itself is fun, it used to be hard to progress but still was doable... now it will take you forever to just "forge" (will get back to this) equipment to progress and make it into the "end-game" stages (Tier 3 and onwards)

there used to be an energy system (it's still there... somewhat) that gave you 100 energy each day (would cost 10 energy to play a single map, X amount of energy to craft stuff, increasing amounts to resurect yourself...) at first i didn't like it (the early stages... you know, the time where you want to get to play as much as you can hehe) then they introduced elevator passes (free maps, so the 100 energy could be spend wich ever way you wanted) and well... that was just awsome! and there was also an other energy appart from the 100 you got every day (this you could trade for with ingame currency or get with real money) there was a small diffrence between the 2 appart from one being free every day and the other grindable or purchasable.

so now a bit about the new energy system, the dailey energy got removed (wich is even better then purchasing an elevator pass if you don't want to support the devs) and the elevator (maps) cost is removed wich makes it easy to play as much as you want, how you want. the other energy however is still there :) but now you can only either buy pre-forged weapons or craft new weapons. (same as the old system)

still sounds good doesn't it? :) offcourse it does! the energy system made it so you could play as much as you want. ok you COULD play as much as you want before but you needed to get the energy to do so wich was kinda pricy with ingame curency on lower lvl's (will come back on this too)

so now on to something that (will) ruin(ed) the game for new players and players that still need to create A LOT of gear... the forge! just thinking about this thing makes me glad i got to play the game for so long (1100+ hours hehe) this is the demon that makes this game 100 times more grindy compared to pre-update. after this thing came out i created a few new pieces for my arsenal (wich was easy at first because it had all of the stuff needed to create them) but then came upgrading time... and i still wonder if the idiot who thought this would be "fun" was high on crack or something! this thing can REALY make you give up on a good game...

and also an old problem that further emphasizes how bad the forge update actualy is. you guessed it... grinding for ingame curency and stuff to create/forge/upgrade gear.why it's never realy adressed, i don't know... but boss fights (and the levels leading up to) give you A LOT more money and mats then just playing the random levels. wich makes grinding boring REAL fast.

The game is very addicting, you make good friends and fight on, it's super cute, and has the best Sound Tracks in the game and the gameplay style feels like The Legend of Zelda Link to the past, above all, this is my personal favorite MMO that ever existed for me...

A very fun game to start off with!Then after hours and hours of cartoony fun everything begins to grind to a halt, leveling your character becomes almost impossible without endless hours of grinding and at this point it becomes "free to play, pay to win." Other than this i have no problems with a great game.

PROS:- Very good art.- Very fun level design.- Good mechanics.- Community is great, friendly, and always wanna help others!- Great game overall.

CONS:- Becomes "pay to win."- Music can get repetitive and boring if you play for hours.

My final rating: 8/10.

Why? Although its pay to win, the hours of fun i've had with this game make up for it. Play the game, enjoy it (i promise you will), and then when you get to the point where you cant continue very well, decide wether you wanna buy lots of gear or not. its free unless you choose to pay, so go hard gamers! Try it out, you wont regret it!

This game was fun, at the start. It has a nice Zelda style gameplay, good design and art, plus a good crafting system and auction house and all that kind of stuff. The problem is the game just gets outright redundant before too long. The variety of the missions and the maps in the depths leaves a ton to be desired. After awhile it also becomes clear that there isn't as much weapon variety as you may have thought, and there are some weapon and armor combos that simply overpower others making many of them pointless.

The biggest problem is that while many MMO's deal with content issues early, they continue to develop and expand the game as time goes on. The issue here is that Three Rings has hardly developed a thing in the many years since the game came out. A few maps and missions have come in, but overall the story and main questing route all stalls exactly where it has since the very beginning. They're really good at developing new prize boxes to get people to pay real money for the chance of getting some rare cosmetic item, but development of the actual game has seemingly outright stalled. This last big update they hyped for quite awhile took over a year to come out and really just consisted of a few new guns and a couple new pieces of armor.

Spiral Knights is just a great example of a good game and a good concept losing its steam due to mismanagement and greed. If they cared as much about making progress on their game as they did about finding new ways to get people to spend cash on prize boxes then their game might have a larger playerbase and they wouldn't need to stoop so low to milk the cash cow. I'd love to see this game get back on its feet as I enjoyed the content it did have, but I just don't see that happening until the developer starts to care again. When all is said and done the game is dead now.

Before I begin, do NOT bring my play time into account of this review. I played back when the game had a much more appealing idea behind it and wasn't 100% reliant on Promos to keep it alive.

Now honestly what can be said about this game that hasn't already. From its core it was a very promising game. Frequent updates, fun gameplay, and interesting lore are what made this game so great from the very start. The majority of that changed for the worse when accessories were implemented as it gave the developers a false ideal that accessories are what should keep the game a float instead of pure content that most other games thrive off of to survive. For the most part the game in itself was a great one from the start, but with every level, every floor, every depth you went down further it started to lose the magic that it once had. It became less of a challenge for the player and just ended up turning into a limitless grind to see who could have the best looking set overall. Cosmetics can be nice and mix things up in games, but when that game survives off of that simple factor alone then it is truly not going to last forever. This game could have been something special if it truly didn't rely on cosmetics and reskins to keep it going.

I may have a great deal of a time in this game, but it took me much longer than it should have to truly realize how the devs were handling it after countless promo that managed to root itself in with every event. On its own the gameplay stands out, it's fun whether you enjoy solo play (only for so long), and can be even better when you have a party of friends to play with, but you will quickly lose all enjoyment that you originally had once you reach the end-game content as it doesn't have much to offer other than reskinned bosses with extra challenge added to them. Other than the never-ending grind that presents itself for end-game there truly is no goal afterwards as it gives you nothing to strive for.

For what it is the soundtrack is great, and can easily be memorable if you happen to enjoy calm tunes when relaxing in Haven or enjoy dramatic music when engaging in battle. The graphics are also quite nice with how everything seems to be made to appear cute, but at the same time present some sort of danger. The community (although much smaller now) also happens to be a pretty good part of what makes the game what it is (except the PvP part of it. You know who you are). Other than that the only true flaw that makes me not want to recommend this game is that the devs have basically given up on putting out any true content updates, and mostly focus on reskins and cosmetics like most F2P models fall victim too.

I can’t say I’d ever go back to this game either since it lost all of its charm as soon as I started playing other games and noticed the only real reason I originally played it was due to a nostalgic feeling that it gave. For the most part it reminded me of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and when I had first started this seemed like a wonderful experience since this was what I thought I was missing out on especially since it had co-op functionality.

All - in - All great idea, and interesting mechanics, but the devs have basically become greedy, and have chosen to take the lazy route only to release cosmetics that add no value to the game other than making it another bland dress-up game to see who has the most valuable and shiniest sets.

TL:DR This game is decent, but like most F2P games it has its flaws, and won’t last you too long for enjoyment if you want a truly memorable experience.

I've played this game for ages, more than I want to admit, when the guild hall update came out, we had one of the top guild halls, we saved 20 million crowns to make sure of that, quite honnestly, I spent around 2000$ on this game over the course of a year and a half, had an online girlfriend on there for over a year, made friends; some of who I talk to till this day; one of which, my head GM of my guild and I are pretty much best friends.

That being said, this game has every marking of a tax deductible.

there has been no significant new content in about 2 years, the admins on any social media including their own website WILL ban you for saying anything negative, the incompetence of the staff is IMMENSE and there is a-lot of cronyism going on in the studio.

on some occasions, I've had to contact the CEO directly to get anything done, this is not a normal practice for a game that once had such promise, when your staff basically favours certain players over others and exchange favours for e-stroking.

I've left this game about a year ago now, around the month of january 2014, I couldn't handle the ridiculousness of a crappy studio like three rings anymore.

It's a shame cause I made amazing friends on there, but my goodness, the people working there are awful. case in point, the gunner update took almost 2 years to release.

Let me get the first issue out of the way: everything is server-side. Positioning, projectile paths, health, and loot -- the entire game-state is determined there.This may not seem like such a bad thing, since many online games are like that. But in this game especially, an action game that demands precision and timing, even a small amount of latency can mess up an otherwise perfectly executed run, and it places an inherent limit on level design.

Imagine you've got a lame ISP, or you live somewhere many miles away from the servers, like Australia. See that wheel rolling down the field towards you? Yeah, it's already hit you. Since your connection isn't that great, the server won't realize you've moved your character out of the way until it's too late, and by then it'll already have decided that you've been hit.See that energy bolt the gun puppy just fired? No, you didn't dodge it, sorry. What, you moved away, changing direction at the last second? Oh, but the way the system works, it continuously executes the last command your client sends to the server (which is why you sometimes see people running into the wall when they disconnect). It sure would be horrible if it was just a little bit too slow to send your desire to move away, huh?

This is why I find the combat in something like Phantasy Star Online 2 to be more satisfying. It wouldn't really be suitable for this game, but in PSO2, your interactions with enemies are client-side. You are always positioned at where you appear, and you will never be hit by something that shouldn't have hit you due to latency delay. This has a side-effect of making partying with others slightly confusing, but at least there it is impossible to blame the system for your death. Making these actions client-side has other effects on the game, like the risk of opening the game up to hacking, and occasional difficulty working in sync with your party, but that's all beyond the scope of this review.

By contrast, in Spiral Knights, you will never see a timing challenge any more stressful than slowly walking across some trap panels as they alternate their active states. You will never see any truly fast enemy or anything that represents an actual danger as evidenced by updates that have neutered enemy AI and behaviors within the last few years. To be fair, OOO has made several valiant attempts to remedy this, through shadow lairs and various danger missions(the dailies, Grinchlin, Tortodrone). But new, truly challenging missions have been few and far in between, and everybody's already figured out the lairs and the dailies.

...And don't be fooled by the apparently low sys reqs on steam. If your graphics card and processor aren't up to snuff, MARVEL AT YOUR REVOLUTIONARY 10 AND SOMETIMES 5 FRAMES PER SECOND

So what does this game have going for it?Charm.It is sort of perversely like Blizzard art direction, in which it is well made, with strong detail and proper form. And, also like Blizzard art direction, it hides a somewhat simple, perhaps even degenerate, game behind its pretty veneer.Anyway, the style here is very simple, yet engaging. It draws you in, entices you. It is kind of like Maplestory in this regard, and that game had a TON of charm. Yet, rather also like Maplestory, it doesn't really have a lot of depth to it. And again they're both pretty much full of absurdly rich, absurdly bored people playing dress-up these days.

So why do I still play it? Nostalgia for what used to be. And a desire for a game like this that does everything better.

ADDENDUMIn response to a particular comment I wrote the following text. It merits inclusion in the review:

My internet connection is great. But so much of this game seem to have been tailored to suit a sub-par connection. A few years ago, enemy AI used to be more difficult. Now, wolvers and zombies are motor-impaired. Retrode lasers are a joke. The only monster families that pose any real challenge now are the fiends and gremlins, and even then, fiends were slightly nerfed a few months ago. It is no accident that the most challenging missions (notably, Grinchlin Assault and Tortodrone) feature them prominently.

And some of my friends HATE it. A good connection -- and a good computer! -- seems to be the only reason I can appreciate these missions because without both they are almost unplayable.

Almost, because, well, a few years back I used to play this on a crappy laptop. It gave me 24fps AT BEST, and I was still able to perform FSC runs quite handily(but anything beyond a shadow lair level of difficulty was impossible, because the integrated graphics chip just couldn't handle it).

I have filled this game with 700 hours of my lifetime, and I do not regret them. I enjoy this game and I surely as hell will be playing it more and stack hours ontop of hours playing this game. The thing is, I can't recommend it to new people to play it. This game is a huge grind. A huge grind doing the exact same thing over and over. If you actually want to make progress in the game then be prepared to farm like you have never farmed before because the resources you need to progress are pretty time consuming to get.

If you are going to be a new player, you will not be able to get very far unless you are willing to spend a huge chunk of your life playing this game. Grinding and farming your way all the way to get that full set And even then, you are going to need to farm for your life to get that gear upgraded to it's full potential. Eventually you will get there, but it's extremely time consuming.

Futhermore, this game gets updated quite frequently with COSMETICS, stuff that looks flashy and pretty cool, but you get it by spending alot of real money on the game or FARMING TWICE AS MUCH AS YOU USED TO. Other then that you won't get any big updates with content. We got the gunner update I think a year after it was supposed to be released(not sure?) and that's it.

If farming and grinding is your thing, then I would say go for it.If you are willing to spend ALOT of time on this game, I'd say go for it.If you are willing to spend alot of real money and be a buyfag, I'd say go for it.

Perhaps it is fun to try it out once to never play it again since the gameplay is happy with flashy colours and whatnot, but other then that I really recommend you to spend your worthy time on something much more productive.

Im looking foward to this considering its my first review.This is probably the most played game in my steam library, but there is reasons why i dont recommend it. (keep in mind..... my game time in this game is over 3k hrs)So without further do lets begin.

Intro Experience 10/10If not the best, one of the best intro experiences i have experienced in all my years of dugeon gaming. Nice, catching, simple and smooth intro to controls and the world known as heaven, and above all the game feels ORIGINAL

Midterm Experience 7/10 (woudve been a 6 if the mist system was still intact)So now u have familiarized urself with all the basics in the game to acheive greatness (crafting, grinding, marketing, etc). My only problem here is that u begin to notice how repitive the game is (spamming the same missions over and over again). Depths look exactly the same except reskinned (same with the AI). You soon start to notice a repitive chain of BORING grinding.

End Game Experience 1/10U have basically completed all the missions available (what now?). PvP is swarming with players that drop big bucks on this game to get the jump on u (Skill < Gear). Grinding feels like a boring drag. By this time u start to notice the pay 2 win aspect of this game (either u grind the agonizing BORING depths, or u simply drop some cash on this game). And i can guarantee u that u dont get what u pay for in this game (overated cr$$).

Updates 0/10literally same repeated events each year, sh$$ boxes that just urge u to waste ur precious money. 90% of the updates are overated fashion assesories. In general only 2 useful updates are realeased a year (and they are pretty simple themselves)

ConclusionIn the end this game is short-lived in a way. i would 100% not recommend this game to anybody looking to go into the long run. Shame this game has alot of potential, and the BEST community i have seen up to date.

Spiral Knights is a great game and the community is pretty friendly which really adds to the experience (joining guilds, partying, etc etc). Playstyle mechanics are fairly simple and repetitive but the environment and obstacles require focus so it doesn't get boring. I think what I appreciated most was the art style and the music. The game targets a younger generation but I believe you can play and enjoy this at whatever age. Fantastic game. 8/10.

When It was released on steam it was great game with fair f2p model - Each day you had 100 energy that regenerated to spend on elevators, crafting and other, this energy could have been used as additional part for more costly crafting recipes or you could buy weapon/trinket slots by using all of it and adding some CE energy. Only thing that they were selling in ingame store was CE(stackable energy) which was really fair for all players, because free players could just buy CE off "p2p" players for ingame currency and was not really breaking game as you could only upgrade your gear by playing the game.

Like 2-3 months later they added feature to increase/descrease ratio at which CE is sold for crowns what messed up game economy.100 CE - 2500 Crownswent to100 CE - 5000 Crownsthen 100 CE - 7000 Crownsand later to100 CE - 9000 Crownsand at last to100 CE FOR 11500 Crowns

While having the same drop tables on monsters and having the same elevator tier 2 and 3 rewards as before it made game a grindfest with 2 options only: arena gate on tier 3 runs or Lord Vanaduke runs over and over.

The another bright idea came to their minds and they added fortune wheel at the end of every map and Lock Boxes which needs keys to be opened ofcourse. Everything would be fine if they made it like Team Fortress did, but no they decided to have all things in one lock box making it insane RNG what you could get from it.

Then they added paid mission pack and hardcore floors that were sold for real money.

And finally if that is not enough of mess what they did to this game, they decided to:

- Remove rechargable 100 energy, because it was free

- Remove all elevator costs, so you can gind endlessly and "work" for them

- Remove friendly rerives at cost of half of your health what was original teamplay aspect of the game and change it to CE bought rerives to make more money

- Remove shared drops so everyone has to collect their own from map, also it made solo runs having no adventages over zerg 5* runs

- Remove old weapon lvl up system and change it to every time you heat up your weapon you have to gamble your lvl up or have insane amount of items (that you buy for huge amount of CE or you grind endlessly) needed to do 100% lvlup chance

- Add pets that you feed with real money basically and which destroyed gates crystal system as none is using crystals to fill gates(change floors types), but to make pets food and screw other players with insane prices

- Add 5* reskinned weapons to lock boxes and Auction House, what made game just pay to win, especially in pvp

So yeah if you are asking if this game is any good still, then the answer is NO. There is alot of better f2p titles that are not a "MILK COW" game, but are balancing f2p/p2p very well. But CUTE GRAPHICS, No! Stay away! Shoo!

What used to be a flourishing indie game inspired from some of gaming's best retro is now a former shell of itself. Spiral Knights was fun when it was under indie ownership and it was still great when Nick was leading the development team. He left with a somber note and now I see why; the developer is clearly more interested in adding grind walls to get money out of it's players than it is providing a fun and balanced gameplay. RIP Spiral Knights.

The gameplay is amazing, with an easy combat system to learn. There is a lot of grinding involved, but I never actually got bored while playing, because the combat is just that much fun. However, the music is just okay, and the story leaves something to be desired.

Spiral Knights is an all around good game. It's got stunning graphics, and the cartoony vibe fits it well. Combat is pretty solid, with loads of custimization and what not. Not that many microtranscations, and they're only for DLC or extra crowns (in game currency) or crystal energy (I believe crafting item). Colors are pretty nice too. Performance runs very well, with only a few chugs or hiccups here and there. Community is decent at kindness, but don't expect them to be throwing crowns at your face if you're begging (unless they're really nice). Guilds are also loads of fun. Storyline is probably interesting but I don't pay much mind to it.

I've started playing this game from steam since 2012, but quit many times in the middle, but in 2013 i returned after the battle sprites update, and i'm still playing it. Even with 350+ hours, i've not fully seen all the game has to offer. It's fun mostly and addicting if you're into these type of games, it's design is one of a kind, but thats the pros, the cons is that when you make progress in the game, you'll want to spend money on it because you'll be progressing very very slowly which makes this game very grindy, but all the items in the game you can get from grinding, there are only costume that only requires money for aquiring.